


Old Records

by nellie_faye



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nellie_faye/pseuds/nellie_faye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean and Sam Winchester root through their father's old lock-up, they stumble across something they never thought they'd find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Records

“I’m telling you, Sam,” Dean sighed, sifting aimlessly through a pile of old papers with the barrel of his shotgun. “It’s not here.”

After almost two hours of searching their father’s old storage bunker, Dean was starting to grow restless; he had been more than a little skeptical to begin with, but after scouring every inch of the filing cabinets, the desks, and the rows upon rows of shelves, he was quickly beginning to lose interest in the hunt. John’s lock-up was little more than a junkyard, chock-full of dusty books and rusting antiques, and Dean was willing to bet that their mysterious artifact wasn’t to be found.

“Just, give it some time, Dean,” came Sam’s impatient reply, his head bent and eyes scanning the pages of a leather-bound book that he had found. “We haven’t driven all the way here just to give up.”

“Yeah, like you drove,” the older brother retorted with a scowl, casting his shotgun down on a desk and bringing his hands up over his eyes. He hadn’t slept in over thirty hours, and the long road from South Dakota to New York had worn him down much more than he had expected. Tired and irritated, all he wanted to do was get out of this stinking place, and find a decent motel in which he could sleep until he was content... but no. Sam would not give up on the hunt – the first they’d had in months - _quite_ that easily. 

“Look, Dad’s journal says he ran into the Seal back in ’89,” Sam explained, regardless of his brother’s disinterest, “so if it’s going to be anywhere, it’s here.”

“Fine, just - hurry up, okay? Shout me if you find anything.” 

Leaving his brother to continue the search, Dean slowly made his way across the room, idly inspecting the showcase of items as he walked. Candle stubs, cigarette boxes, empty tin cans and rifle bolts – at first glance, nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary, and many of the objects were typical of any old garage or workshop. But these were not the possessions of some veteran soldier or mechanic – these were the tools of a hunter, acquired over almost two decades of living on the road. 

Picking up a dusty old hunting rifle which had been leaning against a wall, Dean pulled the butt-plate into his shoulder, and lowered his eyes to take a look down the sights. “You know what - half this stuff isn’t that bad. A bit old, but who says you can’t trust an antique, eh Sam?”

A few moments passed before Sam responded, but when he finally managed to call his brother’s name, his voice was slow and cautious. “Dean…” 

Whistling with admiration, Dean tossed the old rifle aside, and reached across to pick up a larger, double-barreled shotgun instead. Turning it over in his hands, Dean tested its weight, grinning widely as he ran his fingers over the polished wood. “Now, _this_ is neat. How come Dad never let me use this?”

“Dean.”

“You know, keeping this from me is practically a crime.”

“ _Dean._ ”

Having finally caught the note of urgency in Sam’s voice, Dean turned on the spot, eyebrows raised a little in surprise as he looked back over to where his brother was sat. Amongst the papers he had been rifling through, one particular document had caught Sam’s attention – a few leafs of lined paper, crudely stapled together on one side. From where Dean was stood, they looked no different to the other scraps that lay strewn about the room – newspaper clippings, police files, and the odd letter, here and there. But from the pained expression which lined Sam’s face, it was immediately clear that they were not as meaningless as they appeared. 

“What is it?” Dean asked at once, dropping all that he held in his hands and striding over to join his brother. “What’ve you found?”

Looking down at the papers Sam held cradled in his lap, Dean could not at first understand their significance. Like the other papers that lay about their father’s locker, the creased and folded sheets were yellowed with age, and the inked markings had faded almost beyond recognition. They had to be at least ten years old, judging by their fragility – placed here when John had first bought this place, and then left, gathering dust ever since. 

Dean was about to turn away, chiding Sam for calling him over for nothing, when something struck him – he did find the pages familiar, and after a few moments of thought, his memory made the connection. The wide-spaced lines, the scrawled handwriting in the margins...

“Pages from Dad’s journal. He-” Sam swallowed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “he must have ripped them out before he gave it to you. He mustn’t have wanted us to see...”  


Inspecting the pages closer, it was only then that Dean noticed what had been pasted, with a few pieces of tape, to the crumpled pages. Hospital bands - rows upon rows of them, laid out on the paper in neat, consecutive lines, across all four sheets. Dean knew what they were immediately – how many times had he woken up in some hospital ward, to find one of those things fixed about his wrist? But never before had he seen so many of them displayed so concisely, and never would he have expected to find something so peculiar in such a place as this. 

The first band was just as yellowed as the paper on which it was taped, and was so small that it could only have been made for a child no older than seven or eight. The fastener had been snapped where it had been pulled away from the wrist, but the little card bearing the details had been left undamaged behind its plastic window. Peering down, Dean could just about decipher the writing, but what he read there turned his blood stone cold. 

_Rockville General Hospital_  
 _Name: Sam Winchester_  
 _Date of Birth: 05/02/83_  
 _Admitted: 12/13/90_

But that was not all. Written beside it, in what was undeniably their father’s handwriting, were the details the hospital could not have given: ‘ _Connecticut, 1990. Wendigo attack. Concussion and minor lacerations._ ’ For every band, their father had written the details of the hunt which had got his sons hospitalized, along with the exact wounds they had sustained. 

“He kept them,” Sam breathed, shuddering. “He kept them all.”

The next band was dated only a year later than the last one, except this time it was Dean’s name, not Sam’s, that was written there. Going by the year marked on the band, he could have been no older than ten – a child, a goddamn child. Even before they had reached adolescence, the two brothers had been admitted to hospital more times than most people had in their entire lives, and each time, their father had written down the cause. ‘ _Wisconsin, 1991. Vampire attack. Broken ribs and internal bleeding._ ’  


Reaching out towards the aged plastic, Dean read over the print one more time, horrified by what his father had done. Whether by guilt or some sick method of stock-taking, John had written the details of every injury, every condition, which the hunting life had cost his sons, and had recorded it in his journal alongside the hospital bands that they had worn. Dean was unsure of whether it made him feel sorrowful or just merely sickened – their father had documented their wounds so systematically, so meticulously, it was like he and his brother were nothing more than damaged goods, battered and broken beyond worth.

With a sudden surge of anger, Dean withdrew his hand. “We should never have come here.” 

Before Sam could raise a hand to stop him, Dean had turned sharply on his heel, and had marched away through the open door of the bunker and out into the night. For a few brief moments, the younger brother listened to the sound of Dean’s retreating footsteps, eyes still fixed on the pages which he held between his hands. Then, casting them away, he stood up, the hunt for the Seal long forgotten as he followed his brother from the bunker, locking the door behind him as he went.

**Author's Note:**

> When Sam and Dean discover their father's peculiar, and honestly rather sickening, method of record-keeping, they are understandably upset - however, I would just like to convey my ideas behind John's strange actions. 
> 
> To John, this documentation was entirely for himself - not to belittle or dehumanize his sons at all, but to remind himself, every day, of the pain he caused his sons when he brought them into a life of hunting. Obviously, these pages would have been in his journal at the time, so he would have flicked past them quite often, and hence were his means to 'guilt-trip' himself, and torture himself over his less than adequate parenting. He never intended his sons to find these pages, as he tore them out long ago. 
> 
> In writing this story, I just felt like such an act adds a further dimension to John's character, and whilst demonstrating the terrible parenting we expect of him, shows how the life of hunting, and the impact it's had on his sons, affects him too.


End file.
